The US president says he wants to negotiate a replacement for the recently expired Strategic Nuclear Deployment Treaty.
Published on February 6, 2026
United States President Donald Trump has offered his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin a voluntary extension. Recently Expired Limits On the deployment of strategic nuclear weapons.
Trump said Thursday that he wants negotiators from both countries to sit down and hammer out a new deal. the old covenant “Bad Negotiations”.
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“Instead of extending ‘New START’ (a badly negotiated treaty by the United States that, aside from everything else, is being grossly violated), we should have our nuclear experts work on a new, improved and modern treaty that will last long into the future,” Trump said on his social media network, Truth Social.
Trump has previously said he wants China to join the new deal, but officials in Beijing have shown little interest in doing so.
The end of the New START treaty means lower limits on the massive nuclear arsenals of the US and Russia, raising concerns about a possible arms race at a time of concern about the resurgence of nuclear weapons.
Putin said last year that he would abide by the agreement for another year if Washington promised to do so.
The US, complaining that the deal limits its ability to deploy more missiles against Russia and China, has ignored the Russian offer.
Moscow expressed regret on Thursday over the expiration of the decade-long agreement. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia It will continue with a “responsible, thorough approach to stability when it comes to nuclear weapons,” adding, “of course, it will be guided primarily by its national interests.”
Al Jazeera’s Shihab Ratnasi, reporting from Washington, DC, said the US and Russian delegations in Abu Dhabi to discuss the war in Ukraine also discussed extending the New START agreement by six months.
“This will be an informal handshake agreement as the agreement itself does not allow for any further extension,” Ratansi said.
“Once that expansion takes place, the aim is to start formal discussions to create an updated nuclear agreement between the two countries,” he said.
Recent fighting between nuclear-armed states such as India and Pakistan has unsettled analysts, who worry about the erosion of treaties banning and preventing the use of nuclear weapons in conflict.
Putin It has also previously suggested that Russia could use nuclear weapons in response to Western efforts to support Ukraine, which has raised fears among observers.
The US and the former Soviet Union signed the first START treaty in 1991.
In 2010, former US President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed an agreement called New Start, which allowed each country to have a maximum of 1,550 nuclear weapons and 700 missiles and bombers ready for deployment and use.
The deal was extended for another five years in 2021 after an agreement between Putin and then US-President Joe Biden.